Regret
by mythirdeye
Summary: Future fic, all Lex and past memories


Author's Note: I haven't written in a really, really long time, so I hope this doesn't turn out too badly. In any case, feel free to review, because I haven't had that kind of rush in ages.

By the way, this fic is set in not-too-distant but distant enough future. It has to be the future, as I haven't finished watching all of Season 2 yet.

Enjoy! : )

* * * * *

John Barrymore was a wise man. He once said that a man is not old until regret take the place of dreams, and if I were to follow that wisdom, I believe then that I am a very old man.

I have not yet had time to reflect on this, on my mistakes, on my actions, my ignorance. Or perhaps I have had plenty of time, I just chose not to deal with it. Can one blame me? When you're in a room and suffocating in a cold sea of blackness, which personifies every single bad and regrettable thing in your life, and realizing that it has grown to volume of which could literally kill you, the best thing you can do is to ignore it. To take a step away, and focus your attention on something else. Things more fruitful and important in reality, yet in that sensitive organ that bruises and damages easily at the same time that it makes you breathe, there is no importance in property and money and controversies. It seems remarkably funny that I seem to center my life around these very things I believe are insignificant.

I don't like regret, and I certainly don't like indulging in it. Regret is nothing but a waste of energy, self-depreciating at best, wasting hours thinking about the past and conjuring up ways you could have righted all those wrongs. It's nothing but a myriad of despair, encircling you, when I know full well that there's nothing you can do to change history. I should have done this. I should have done that. I should have said this. I shouldn't have said that. I should have tried harder. What's the point? I should have, but I can't now, and where's the aim in thinking about it?

But shadows catch up with you, no matter how fast you run. And at some point in time, you will have to stop and actually indulge in it, because you wouldn't be human otherwise. My shadow has caught up with me this fateful afternoon, sitting in my car and watching the sun set behind a white house in the middle of a street full of other white houses. My shadow has caught up with me in the form of a dark-haired wonder boy, ignorant as I am but blissfully so.

"She's leaving," he said to me, earlier today. "She's taking that job in Metropolis. I'm happy for her, but I can't help but feel that a part of me will be gone. Do you know what I mean?"

I knew only too well what Clark meant, perhaps I knew in a level better than he would have supposed. I had to hide it, and to bear it, in silence, and finally I had something to thank my father for. Severing me from normal human emotions, teaching me to mask my feelings, teaching me to hide behind a wall. It kept my face straight and my tone sympathetic, although sympathy was far down on my list.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Clark," I heard my voice say, mechanically. I found the irony in comforting this man when it should be he that comforts me. But Clark couldn't have known better. He never knew, after all. Nobody did. That was our decision, perhaps the only decision mutually agreed by us.

__

Why didn't she tell me?

I spent the remainder of a day in a hypnotic stance, where inside my mind I was struggling to sustain the memories down, but instead of turning me into a seemingly emotionless man, I found that today it only made me comatose. I suppose this is the result of when memories won't be suppressed anymore, and they came to me in a sudden flood of overwhelming emotions.

__

Blonde hair, wispy to the touch.

__

Naked skin on a rainy afternoon.

Sleeping peacefully, boundless energy finally at rest.

Murmurs in the dark.

Tentative fingers on my scalp.

Oh, but the power of ignorance. How I took it for granted! I was suddenly turned into a bystander beyond my will, watching myself go through the motions of the day, robotic and unwilling, while visions fluttered before my eyes.

The house is nondescript, much like the other houses in this neighborhood. Unfortunately, irrationality doesn't prepare you for the setbacks of your actions, and I fear that I might learn to regret mine today. Hoping to remain in the background while hidden in a car that was designed so that it would not be ignored. I know that neighbors might be wondering what a silver Ferrari would be doing parked in this area, while knowing full well that there could only be one person who drives a car like this.

And why the driver would remain so fixated on this one house, of all houses, on this street, of all streets, in Smallville.

__

"Some people might think that you're an eccentric millionaire, but now I'm sure that you're just plain weird."

What made me come here? I know that nothing could be changed from this. How could I explain it? It seems that the whole town has been emptied, and in my desperate search to gain the town back, I went looking for the world, and found the world in this house. Does she know how desolate the world is, when she decides to leave it?

__

"I could never understand you, Lex. Perhaps I never will."

I am not brought up to be understood. I was raised to rule the world. I was raised to hate people, while embracing them for my own usefulness. I was raised to be heartless. You may put a woman in front of me and I can promise her a good time, but I can never promise her anything else. 

What happens to a man that is raised to be heartless and finds himself irrevocably in love? Can anyone understand what a mass of confusion that brings about? I couldn't ever willingly give in to something as inconstant and variable as love.

It would mean living a life absolutely different to the one that I have come to expect, and that's not something I can do with my eyes closed. 

I'm so sorry.

__

"I can't wait for you forever."

I suppose she couldn't. It would have been unfair of me to assume, and it would have been cruel of me to make her wait. In doing so I would have only concealed her from the world, and I'm not insensible to the fact that she is far too amazing to remain hidden.

I understand that she had to leave. I understand that a majority of this reason had to do with me. And I understand that most of it is to be blamed on me. I'm not absolutely ignorant, after all.

__

"What else can I do, Lex? I'm not your secret little pet. I'm not here for you to trample on whenever you feel like it."

Sure, I understand. But that fact didn't stop me from being angry.

__

"Please stop it, Lex. I hate it when you act this way."

But anger, predictably, webs away after a while. And in the debris of its wake you can see nothing solid to have made such a foundation in the first place. Just regret.

I am my father's son.

__

"Yes you are, Lex. You're too much of your father's son."

No, I wasn't raised to regret. I wasn't raised to look back and think about the things I have done, and ways that I may correct them.

I wasn't raised to mourn over a broken heart. I was raised to believe that such things were trivial, and a waste of my time. For the longest time, I think I believed that to be true. But when the time comes that the object of your regret comes to look you in the face, and refuses to be ignored any further, then you realize something. Something very imperative in the process of being the person that you are in this world.

I am human after all. 

But I can't change. I wouldn't even know where to start. I wouldn't change for anything in this world, and I certainly wouldn't change for a woman.

Although I was extremely tempted, for a while there.

This just hurts too much.

__

"Sometimes I think that you're just devoid of any emotion."

How ironic it would be that on the day she would leave, I would prove her wrong.

My mind comes to a standstill when the object of my thoughts steps outside of the door. She stands on her porch with two fists resting on either side of her, looking around the neighborhood, as if taking a mental picture in her mind.

She inhales deeply, stamping a memory of the scent of the day she leaves Smallville. 

She remains that way for some time, standing alone, much too little in the world yet far too big for it at the same time. Eccentric in dress, outstanding in everything else.

Chloe.

__

"I love you. I probably always will. Remember that."

Life's too big and too important to dwell on the little things. Memories have the mark to improve your future, to ensure that you don't repeat the same mistakes but that is all that they should serve to do. There are many paths on the road to Greatness, and dawdling in the happiness of one lane will not make me walk faster or closer to the goal in achieving it. There are far too many important things and far too many bigger obstacles for me to face.

Has Chloe ever been a path on my journey? Or just a pleasant sideline? I don't suppose I would ever know. Love is too illogical for you to make a proper assessment of it and in this current frame of mind I don't think I should even try.

__

"I hope you have a happy life, Lex." 

I hope so too.

After a moment, her eyes rest on Ferrari, and on the driver inside it. For the longest time, she looks straight at me, with a certainty.

We stare at each other under this intense gaze for some time, perhaps she's trying to decipher me for one last time. It comes to a point that I actually have this insanely optimistic thought that perhaps she would come up to this car, to me, and tell me that she won't leave after all. The sensible part of me reminds me that no good would come out of that. It would just be a relationship re-lived and never improved. She will never understand me, and I will never let her.

But at the same time, I can't help but hope.

After another moment, she looks away and walks inside.

And I find myself unwanted here.

Jaw set, shoulders rigid, eyes focused straight ahead. I rev up the engine, and prepare my own departure. This was never a world that I could have lived in. I could never have been satisfied with it, and I think that I might have left it myself, in the end.

But I'm human, as much as I try to deny it, and this is marked by a single tear that escapes down my cheek: my only allowance for regret and loss, and that's it. 

The world would not be so fortunate to see Lex Luthor in such a pitiable state, not anymore.

I drive away from her world, and I leave my memories with it.


End file.
